GIVINGWINGS WYOMING AVIATOR CHOSE TO LEAVE $135,000 TO RMC
Alaska,” she said. “But he was a pretty private person.”
There wasn’t much stated in the obituary when William A. “Billy” Bradford died. A funeral home service. Private internment in Dubois, Wyoming. Date of birth, December 18, 1941. Date of death, November 30, 2012.
Albright said he and Billy renewed their friendship over their shared interest as aviators.
That’s the way Bradford wanted it, said his friends. It was sad in a way because Billy had done a lot in his life. He grew up in Fort Washakie, the son of William Taft and Leona Viola Bradford. His family and the family of his friend, Harold Albright, were neighbors ranching in the Wind River. Billy was older than Harold, but they shared a common passion. Airplanes. “If you’re a kid on horseback trying to get from one place to another and you look up and see an airplane, well, you think ‘Now that’s the way to get somewhere,’” Albright said. Both he and Billy looked up a lot. Older by a dozen years, Billy was first in the air. “He flew all kinds of small planes. He was a bush pilot. Then he learned to fly bigger airplanes. He flew slurry bombers to fight fires in Alaska. He flew PBY 4Ys,” Albright said, referring to the four-engined bombers converted to dump retardant on forest fires. “He loved flying and he could fly about anything,” he said. An enrolled member of the Shoshone Tribe, Bradford frequently flew contract jobs in Alaska, ferrying tribal and government officials around. He also was an outfitter and guide. “I knew him through my first husband,” said Lorena Kohler, a public accountant in Riverton. “He flew us to Canada in 1969. Then he pretty much vanished until he showed up in 2000 and asked me to help with his taxes.”
“He was my mentor. He really knew how to fly in the mountains and more than once what he taught me about mountain flying saved my life,” Albright said. Billy became a family friend as well. “We loved Billy as one of the family. He lived an amazing life, and I am proud to say that I was able to call him a friend. He will be greatly missed,” wrote Megan Ward in the funeral home guestbook. She is Albright’s daughter.
a small service at the Davis Funeral Home in Riverton prior to this body being transported to Dubois by the funeral home. Many of his friends and acquaintances were there. He also wanted to make sure his estate was in order. He took care to leave some money to the animal shelter. He gave some to a few friends. And the rest he wanted to go to Rocky Mountain College. He had communicated with Dan Hargrove, RMC director of aviation, who sent him materials about RMC’s program. He never attended RMC. He never visited. “He looked around for a university that had an aviation school,” Kohler said. “He wanted to help young aviators.” RMC was the closet one to Riverton, Albright said.
When Bradford came home to Fremont County, he knew his travelling days were over, but not his flying days. Nor his days to work on aircraft.
“He read something about it, I think, and thought that’s where the rest of my money is going to go,” Kohler noted.
“He’d buy an old plane and fix it up. He loved tinkering with planes almost as much as flying them,” Albright said.
He hoped maybe it would help a student from Wyoming or Montana, or, at least, an inter-mountain state. If there weren’t any who qualified, then, sure, award it to any deserving aviation student, Bradford instructed.
Albright, who owns a construction company, a sand and gravel company, and a cattle ranch, said Bradford and he shared “wearing a lot of hats” to earn a living. “He ranched, outfitted, flew . . . whatever you had to do to keep going,” Albright noted. When Bradford learned he had terminal cancer, he refused to leave his home. He had a hospital bed set up, had home health nursing care, and kept active right up to the end. “When he went, it was pretty quick,” Kohler recalled. “He didn’t want a fuss.” Bradford had arranged his funeral several years before his passing right down to the music, picture, and wood casket, Kohler said. He wanted
Whoever received the scholarship would need to maintain a 3.00 grade point average, “have an expressed career in aviation, especially to become a pilot,” but, since Bradford loved animals and country living as well as aviation, a student in equestrian studies or environmental studies might qualify as well. The amount came to $135,000, according to Obert Undem, RMC director of planned giving. “It was a pleasant surprise, of course,” Undem said. “Here was someone who had no known connection to RMC. He never attended and, apparently, didn’t know anyone who did, but many lives will be significantly changed by Bill Bradford’s own dream, to help others fly.”
He left again, but resurfaced in 2005, this time for good, resettling in Riverton, and again hiring Koehler to do his taxes and be his personal representative for his estate. “He was always interesting and had a lot of stories to tell about flying in Giving Wings
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